What "light" distros do is to use different GUIs with fewer features or cut out some packages which are otherwise standard in other distros. This can save RAM and disk space, but won't generally make programs run faster unless you have a large program which is running out of RAM.

The RPi Zero has a single core 1GHz CPU, while the RPi 3B has a quad core 1.2 GHz CPU. The Zero is going to be inherently slower.

The question is going to be, what are you doing with it? The Zero isn't intended to be used as a desktop computer. If you are using it without a GUI to run typical programs on it's own, then the choice of distro won't really make much difference, unless as said previously, you are running into a RAM bottleneck.

I haven't tried DietPi, but it looks like it doesn't even come with a GUI, so there's not a lot to be gained there versus using Raspbian with the GUI disabled. However, what DietPi does seem to offer is easier configuration without a GUI.

I would suggest there's a trade-off. DietPi seems to be easier to configure for situations where you have an application you want to run in an "embedded" configuration. Raspbian seems to be better suited if you are running it as a desktop with monitor, keyboard, and mouse plugged in while you develop a program interactively or just fiddle around learning. There is also probably a lot more information about Raspbian on the Internet which you can google if you are looking for answers to particular problems.

So, I would suggest that it's a trade-off rather than a clearcut answer in favour of either.

LE

I know the zero is not a desktop, i run Chromuim for an experiment on it, hit 100% CPU usage straight away. So I cut that off quickly.
Will give DietPi a try, after all it's all about trying stuff out. I want the zero embedded in a project.

LE

What "light" distros do is to use different GUIs with fewer features or cut out some packages which are otherwise standard in other distros. This can save RAM and disk space, but won't generally make programs run faster unless you have a large program which is running out of RAM.

The RPi Zero has a single core 1GHz CPU, while the RPi 3B has a quad core 1.2 GHz CPU. The Zero is going to be inherently slower.

The question is going to be, what are you doing with it? The Zero isn't intended to be used as a desktop computer. If you are using it without a GUI to run typical programs on it's own, then the choice of distro won't really make much difference, unless as said previously, you are running into a RAM bottleneck.

I haven't tried DietPi, but it looks like it doesn't even come with a GUI, so there's not a lot to be gained there versus using Raspbian with the GUI disabled. However, what DietPi does seem to offer is easier configuration without a GUI.

I would suggest there's a trade-off. DietPi seems to be easier to configure for situations where you have an application you want to run in an "embedded" configuration. Raspbian seems to be better suited if you are running it as a desktop with monitor, keyboard, and mouse plugged in while you develop a program interactively or just fiddle around learning. There is also probably a lot more information about Raspbian on the Internet which you can google if you are looking for answers to particular problems.

So, I would suggest that it's a trade-off rather than a clearcut answer in favour of either.

LE

UNIX & Linux use the swap paradigm too. The basic idea is that if the physical memory is exhausted, lesser-used blocks of it get parked onto storage, whether that be HD, or flash storage (if available). HD and flash storage is orders of magnitude slower than physical SD-RAM. Like taking a parcel off a train and having a bloke deliver it on a bicycle. But when the memory that's been parked is required again, the bloke on the bike has to turn round and go back to the station. It works, but it's sloooow.

"...I avow my hope and faith, sure and inviolate, that in the days to come the British and American peoples will for their own safety and for the good of all walk together side by side in majesty, in justice, and in peace"

LE

As others have said, if you find your computer doing much swapping, that's a sign that you don't have enough RAM. You either need to add more RAM (which is not possible on an RPi or impractical on many laptops), or you need to figure out how to use less RAM (close down any programs you don't really need).

There can be some fine nuance to this though. Sometimes pushing memory that is rarely accessed out to swap can actually speed things up by freeing up RAM to use for things like disk buffers (storing frequently accessed files in RAM). This is why fiddling with swap parameters is probably best left to people who have a lot of experience with that sort of thing.

If you are using the laptop with whatever operating system it came with, the amount of RAM was probably adequate at the time. How much RAM does the Arduino program itself use when running?

Since this is Windows, have a look at whether there is anti-virus installed and whether it is freaking out because it's virus data files are all years out of date. Or check whether Windows is attempting to download and install multiple years worth of updates. Of course we must also remember that this is an old computer and that computers were slower in those days, and you have gotten used to newer ones.

Generally, there's a lot of stuff going on behind the scenes with Windows and much of it is undocumented, so diagnosing the reasons behind "slow" is difficult. What's slow? The graphics? Reading and writing files? Menus? Does it become unresponsive? Etc. I'm not an expert on Windows XP, so I'm not great at remote diagnosis, but that's where I would start.

LE

Just put a skinny Linux on the laptop and be done with it. It'll be fine, even if it's just a proxy for the USB hardware to connect to the Arduino from the iPad.

ssh to the laptop from the iPad and you're done.

"...I avow my hope and faith, sure and inviolate, that in the days to come the British and American peoples will for their own safety and for the good of all walk together side by side in majesty, in justice, and in peace"

LE

I mentioned I was trying to get Splunk going on my network earlier. I thought I'd have to use my RPi as a sensor, but it turns out I don't. There's a most excellent piece of software called softflowd, which runs on the router and generates Netflow v9 and exports it over UDP like a real (ie Cisco or Juniper) router.

I have Splunk running on my iMac, and while it's been a battle of wits to get it to ingest the events, I appear to be on the front foot with it. It's recording thousands of flow events. Now I just need to figure out how to show some reports using my data and we're there. Should just be a matter of the syntax for the query and then the parameters for the visualization.

"...I avow my hope and faith, sure and inviolate, that in the days to come the British and American peoples will for their own safety and for the good of all walk together side by side in majesty, in justice, and in peace"

LE

Bit of an update with my network monitoring project. I ended up binning Splunk, because it needs a plugin that won't run on my system, and the free version won't automatically email reports. So off to ELK-land. Elasticsearch-Logstash-Kibana is the open source equivalent of Splunk. There's a Netflow plugin, so it will ingest the traffic going through my router. Well I have to say it's been a complete ball-ache to get this thing to run on macOS, but I achieved Valhalla a couple hours ago. Now I can see exactly WTF is going on, on my network.

The good news is, other people have this running on a Raspberry Pi, so I might give that a bash. On the Mac, it's using 1% CPU and a gig of memory. Given the Mac is a 4GHz 8-core machine, it's going to tax the RPi quite a bit, but on the positive side, it will be totally silent. The disk writes are very frequent, and I can hear the disk clicking away. So better to put it on an all-flash box and throw the USB drive away when it eventually fails.

Here's some monitoring porn

"...I avow my hope and faith, sure and inviolate, that in the days to come the British and American peoples will for their own safety and for the good of all walk together side by side in majesty, in justice, and in peace"

LE

LE

I have a problem.
The Pi has not been fiddled with but on boot up this morning refuses to find my router. It is not the WiFi turned off as the Pi is finding a lot of routers just not mine!
The router is working as all other devices in the house connect straight away.

Old-Salt

I have a problem.
The Pi has not been fiddled with but on boot up this morning refuses to find my router. It is not the WiFi turned off as the Pi is finding a lot of routers just not mine!
The router is working as all other devices in the house connect straight away.

LE

Further. Raspbian has had a big update.
So remember: sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get upgrade
to keep that Rpi running tickity boo mine update took about 40 minutes overall and that was from a 2 week update!

LE

I've held off getting a new Rpi. My basket I originally wanted put back in and looking at this ModMyPi | JustBoom Digi Zero pHAT
plug into an old sound bar. Add a small touch screen and I have a mini juke box sorted.

EDIT Chromium is faster on my Rpi3, much faster including the black magic the ISP done but I notice the CPU usage is higher so at some point the temp will rise. Have a graph running in the background(I have learnt a lot on that stuff from this thread) to see what the temp runs at with the update compared to last week pre update.